“That’s what Brad told everyone.”
He stood and paced, twirling the silver, rapier-shaped letter opener between his fingers, his eyes following the glint of light off the sharpened blade. Holly tried to focus on him, rather than on the shiny metal.
“Stanley, what are you going to do?”
He whirled and grabbed her hair. “You are my love. Mine. If we die together, then so be it, for death and life are one and the same.”
Holly winced as he pulled on her hair and brandished the letter opener, but he only cut one strand and curled it around his fingers. He looked at it and spoke under his breath. “‘I shall hear her knock in the worst of a storm’s uproar, I shall pull her through the door, I shall have her for evermore’!”
Jack, where are you?
Holly cried silently.
J
ACK TURNED THE KNOB
of the door to the men’s locker room. It felt slick and greasy. His heart jumped. Damn. He looked at his hand, which was smeared with a light oily liquid. He rubbed his fingers together, then sniffed.
A jolt of adrenaline shot through him. The substance was clear and odorless, but he knew with a growing dread that it probably contained a lethal poison. He should have used gloves. He quickly wiped the residue on his slacks, knowing he had to get to a sink to wash his hands as quickly as possible.
Although, if the oily substance was dimethyl sulfoxone, it was probably already too late.
Dimethyl sulfoxone, or DMSO, was a unique chemical. He’d learned about it as part of his FBI training. It was absorbed into the body through the skin, and anything dissolved in it was also absorbed. Athletes sometimes used it as a liniment for aches and pains, but it had been used by assassins too, to deliver poison in a nearly undetectable manner.
He stood back and kicked the door. It gave easily, and as he stumbled forward, a fifty-pound weight
glanced off one shoulder and another hit his back. He fell, biting back a shout at the pain, then rolled and regained his feet.
He ran to the nearest sink and scrubbed his hands, hoping the soap and water would slow the action of whatever poison Hanks had used.
Moving quickly and efficiently, he took two small envelopes out of his pocket. Using a torn piece of the first envelope, he rubbed it on the knob, then dropped it into the second envelope and sealed it, jotting the time, date, place and his suspicions on the front. He stuck it back into his pocket. He wanted a record of what he’d touched and where, in case he wasn’t around to talk about it in person.
It occurred to him that he might already be dying. He’d never worried about that before. His job had always been his life, and if he died protecting an innocent, then so be it.
But suddenly, desperately, he wanted to live. He had to rescue Holly. His heart pounded hard against his chest wall, and he wasn’t sure if it was the poison or the fear that he would be too late to save Holly.
Glancing around quickly, he saw there were only two doors in the men’s locker room—the door to the showers and the door to the linen closet.
He looked at the closet. It was big, a walk-in with shelves across the back. As Jack grabbed a towel to dry his hands he scrutinized the walls. Was that panel on the right wall out of alignment?
He pushed. The panel gave. It was a door. A piece of torn cloth hanging from a nail served as the knob.
Jack carefully slid the door open and shone his high-powered pocket flashlight into the blackness. There were metal stairs leading downward.
His pulse raced. This was where Hanks had taken Holly. He was sure of it.
A taste like garlic filled his mouth and certainty settled like rocks in his gut. The characteristic taste of DMSO in his saliva meant the chemical was already entering his bloodstream, along with whatever poison Hanks had combined with it.
As if on cue, his hand started to burn.
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Decker.
“Mitch.” He could hear the rhythmic beat of helicopter blades through the phone line. Decker was on his way. He prayed his boss would arrive in time to save Holly.
“Jack. Where the hell are you?”
“He’s got her in the subbasement of the gym. He knows I’m here.”
“There are three field agents on their way, along with Detective Polk. You wait for them.”
“Can’t.” Jack’s chest was becoming tight. His hands and feet were tingling. It was getting hard to breathe. “No time. Listen. Have the…lab check Danny’s body—” His breathing was becoming short. “DMSO. Check…hands, feet.”
“That’s how he was poisoned? How do you know?”
“Gotta go, Decker.”
“Jack!”
“Tell T-Bone…door in the linen closet. Men’s locker room. Hurry. And call an ambulance. I think I may be going into anaphylactic shock.”
Jack heard Decker’s shout but he didn’t have time to explain. He thrust the cell phone back into his pocket without turning it off. Decker could listen in.
He licked his dry lips, noticing that his tongue already felt swollen.
He’d never gone in much for praying, but he prayed now—for the strength to get to Holly, to see her one more time, to save her from Hanks. He prayed for the courage to tell her how much he loved her, how in three days she’d changed his life forever.
He stepped into the blackness.
H
OLLY HEARD THE HEAVY THUDS
above their heads. Hope pumped through her veins like adrenaline. Was it Jack?
Stanley turned from replacing the textbook. He made a sweeping gesture toward the ceiling of the tiny room, his ruffled sleeve waving. “Listen, my love. It is your lover. He has found us.”
Her heart pounded in her breast. Jack was here. All she had to do was keep Stanley focused on her, to give Jack a chance to sneak up on him.
“You think he will rescue you. So fickle. You have yet to learn that I am the only one who is true.” Stanley turned a page in the book. “Worry not about your husband. If he did not succumb to the heavy weights that felled him, he will soon feel the wasp’s sting.”
Holly jerked in shock. Dread tasted like gall in her mouth. “Wasp’s sting?”
Stanley cocked his head and glanced up. “Right now, your defiler is either dead from the weights that crushed his head, or dying from the wasp venom that swirls in his veins. Either way, he is doomed and you are mine.”
“Why are you doing this?” Holly shouted in frustration, jerking on her bonds. She felt some give in the knot that tied her hands to the brass headboard. A thrill
of hope raced through her with such ferocity that she almost cried out.
Her arms ached, but she couldn’t afford to let them relax now. If the knot was coming loose, she had to hide that fact from Stanley until she could get the drop on him.
He was so strong, though, and her arms hurt so badly.
“Why? Because you are mine, my love. I waited so long for you to come to me. I carefully eliminated those who turned your head and I waited. Now there is only one last barrier to our love.” He gestured again.
How had Stanley lived for so long in this small town without anyone realizing he was insane? He’d always been quiet, kept to himself, never said much. He’d been practically invisible. She could hear Jack’s voice echoing in her head.
Classic serial-killer profile.
Now he was going to kill Jack. She didn’t understand everything he’d said, but she believed his vow to eliminate the last barrier. And she knew that last barrier was Jack.
“Stanley, please don’t hurt him. I’ll do what you want, I promise.” Her pulse beat frantically in her throat. She needed to get loose, to somehow immobilize Stanley until Jack got here.
Stanley stood and paced. “Don’t you see? It’s too late now. You did not come to me. We could have been so happy. We could have lived together, and chased each other through the house, and slept together and written in our journals together. But you wasted your time and your love on those unworthy of you, and now, all that’s left for us is the ultimate. We must die together.”
He stopped and listened. “I must go see if your husband has succumbed to my efforts.”
“Wait!” Holly looked around frantically, searching for something to distract Stanley long enough for Jack to find them. Carefully she pulled on the strips of cloth. They gave a bit more as Stanley turned to look at her.
“What is it now, my treacherous love?” he asked.
Her gaze lit on her wedding gown. “Let me wear my wedding gown for you,” she said, her voice quavering. She swallowed hard and fought for control. “If we must die together, let us die as bride and groom.” She watched him carefully. She didn’t remember much of Browning, and she wasn’t very poetically inclined, but maybe she could entice him with her pitiful efforts.
His pale blue eyes narrowed on her, and for a moment she was afraid he’d seen through her ruse. But then he turned and looked at the dress.
“Bride and groom,” he said thoughtfully, then turned back to her. “I like you better in your virginal gown, but it cannot restore your purity. I saw you and your faithless lover entwined. I saw you betray me. I waited patiently, but you liked their defilement, didn’t you. You wanted it.”
Holly could see the whites around his eyes. He was raving.
“Perhaps…” he whispered, looking back at the gown hanging beside the desk. “Perhaps it would be fitting. You dying as a bride, with I your true groom.” He reached to pull down the dress.
With a fierce tug, Holly pulled the knot on her bindings loose. The muscles in her arms cramped with pain, but she bit her lip and pushed through the agony. She grabbed the ends of the cloth that had tied her wrists to the headboard. In a swift, jerky movement,
she pulled her bound feet under her and lunged at Stanley, throwing the strip of cloth over his head and crossing her wrists, tightening the impromptu garrote around his throat.
He yelped and shoved himself backward, falling on top of her on the bed, knocking her crown against the headboard.
As she fought to clear her blurred vision, a crash sounded at the door to the little room and she saw Jack, bathed in all the stars that were bursting in front of her eyes.
Jack looked like an angel. A wavering angel, holding himself up by sheer force of will, his left hand gripping the door facing, his face marred by red patches and his breathing rasping loudly in the quiet room.
“Get off her, Hanks,” he croaked, leveling his gun at Stanley, who was still on top of her.
Struggling to pull air into her lungs, Holly tugged on the cloth she’d wrapped around Stanley’s throat, but he got his fingers around it and thrust it over his head, jerking her bound wrists.
“Go ahead, O’Hara. Shoot. My true love and I wish to die together, anyway.”
Jack struggled for one more breath. His throat was fast closing up. His lungs weren’t working right, and he could barely see. He knew if he tried to shoot Hanks he might hit Holly. But he didn’t have long, and if he didn’t do something, Holly would definitely die.
His hand was burning like fire and his fingers would hardly move, but he squeezed the trigger.
Hanks cried out and lunged at him, knocking him backward. The man was quick and strong. Knowing he didn’t have much time before the full force of the
wasp venom kicked in, Jack tried to get off another shot, but his fingers wouldn’t work—he was losing motor control.
He saw Holly moving. “Holly, get out of here,” he shouted, hearing his voice come out choked and hoarse. “Go get help.”
But as Hanks lunged at him, Holly, with strips of cloth dangling from her wrists, appeared behind him and stabbed him with something. Hanks screeched and arched backward, knocking Holly down, then lunged again at Jack.
Jack wrapped his hand around his gun, concentrating on making his hand work. He endured the force of Hanks’ head butting him in the stomach, and went with the blow.
He felt he was moving in slow motion as he stuck the barrel in Hanks’ ribs and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Fourteen
Holly paced back and forth in the Intensive Care waiting room. After she’d been examined and released, Debi had brought her some clothes. Holly’s brain was still hazy from the effects of the chloroform, but she had refused to leave the hospital until Jack’s condition could be determined.
The paramedics who’d rushed Jack to the hospital had explained how he’d been poisoned. Holly had heard of DMSO but she’d never seen it used. In the ambulance, Jack had been intubated to help him breathe, and then, before they could get to Forrest General, he’d convulsed, his body writhing in a violent seizure, and the EMTs had pushed her aside to administer more epinephrine.
Jack had been rushed straight into the Intensive Care Unit to receive life support while physicians assessed the damage wrought by the wasp venom and the anaphylactic reaction on his system.
So Holly waited. As a physical therapist, she’d worked in and around hospitals her whole career, but today she felt helpless and lost.
Please, God, don’t let him die,
she prayed silently.
I can make myself go on without him in my life if I have to, but I can’t live knowing he died to save me.
A hand touched her shoulder.
“Holly?” an unfamiliar voice said.
She turned to face a tall, powerful man with kind eyes and wind-tousled hair.
“I’m Mitchell Decker.”
“Special Agent Decker.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Call me Mitch.” He took her hand. “I understand he’s still sedated.”
She nodded, tears clogging her throat. “I haven’t seen him. They took him straight into ICU. He went into anaphylactic shock. Stanley poisoned him—” She couldn’t continue.
Mitch put his arm around Holly’s shoulders. “I know,” he said quietly. “Jack called me on his cell phone. He figured out that was how Hanks killed Danny. Hanks must have entered Danny’s apartment after he’d fallen unconscious from the poison and stuck a wasp stinger in his neck, then removed whatever object he’d coated with the venom and planted in the apartment.
“As soon as Jack realized that Hanks had coated the doorknob in the gym with poison, he preserved a sample in an evidence envelope, labeled it with all the necessary information and put it in his jacket pocket.”